Retroactive Hope

I have been enjoying the television series Mad Men as of late. My boyfriend and I weren’t really into watching television, but we got hooked and plowed through all four seasons a few months ago. And now I’ve been re-watching it. It is a well-written series with meticulous attention to visual detail. The cast is talented, and the leading actor is painfully handsome. This makes watching the often idiotic characters doing repeatedly idiotic things bearable.

Furthermore, it is a show about advertising executives at a company (Sterling Cooper) who make large sums of money. Their biggest client is a tobacco company called Lucky Strike. The main characters are rich because they help propagate an addictive, dangerous drug. In spite of all this, it is an engaging, well-made show with solid acting.

The ubiquitous nature of smoking in the show reflects the time the show takes place in: the 1960s. It is both amusing and tragic to see people constantly and compulsively lighting up: while they exercise, when they wake up in the middle of the night, or even while they are pregnant. The acceptability of smoking and drinking while pregnant is frightening.

We now know better and look back on that time as perhaps naive, ignorant, or simply too hooked to be willing to face the facts. But of course, it is easy for me to judge 50 years later.

I wonder how our predecessors will look back on this time in a few generations. What stupidities will they laugh at? What, if anything, will become unacceptable?

I can only hope that sugar is exposed for what it is. It would be great if people would look back and shake their heads in shame at the prevalence of high fructose corn syrup the way we shake our heads in shame at a smoking pregnant woman.

I hope lists like this are taught in schools along side the dangers of smoking, hard drugs, and drinking. And that cutting dietary sugar becomes part of the standard treatment protocol for treating ADHD, Autism, GI dysfunction, diabetes, hormonal imbalances, hypertension, chronic fatigue, cancer, etc